Conservation groups plan a provincial fund to buy new parks

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Island Tides, a great newspaper serving the Gulf Islands, has printed the full article on the 16 conservation and recreation groups in BC calling on the BC government to establish a $40 million/year land acquisition fund to purchase and protected endangered ecosystems on private lands. Places like McLaughlin Ridge in Port Alberni's drinking watershed, Horne Mountain above Cathedral Grove, the Cameron Valley Firebreak (similar to a 2nd Cathedral Grove but unprotected), the Koksilah, Muir Creek, Stillwater Bluffs, the Day Road Forest…and hundreds of other endangered areas on private lands could benefit from such a fund.

See the full article in the Island Tides at: https://islandtides.com/assets/reprint/environment_20160128.pdf

Push for provincial land-acquisition fund gathers steam

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A plan to establish an annual $40-million provincial fund to purchase private land now has 16 conservation and recreation groups behind it.

“That’s just going to continue to grow,” said Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance.

Wu said that the push to preserve more land takes in a variety of needs, including protecting watersheds that supply drinking water and helping tourism by keeping natural areas intact. He said he expects tourism businesses to start getting behind the fund.

The call for a provincial fund has picked up momentum with a report from the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre that included a “menu” of funding options used by governments across North America.

“They don’t even have to raise taxes for a good chunk of this,” Wu said, noting one measure that has worked well in other places is using unredeemed deposits from beverage containers.

Dubbed “pops for parks,” it is estimated that the strategy could generate $10 million to $15 million a year.

“If you don’t return [the containers], then that money, in places like New York state and a lot of jurisdictions in the U.S., is used by the government to expand their protected-area system,” Wu said.

The report also suggested a special tax on non-renewable resources such as oil and gas and a tax on real-estate speculation.

Wu said an example of how such funds can work is the Capital Regional District’s park-acquisition fund, which is supported by a household levy.

“The places that people love in the Greater Victoria region — like the Sooke Hills, the Sooke Potholes, Jordan River for surfing — those were secured from development as a result of the CRD’s leadership,” he said.

Among the sites on Vancouver Island that could benefit from a provincial fund are the Koksilah area near Shawnigan Lake and the mountainside above Cathedral Grove, Wu said.

The provincial government had a land-acquisition budget until 2009, but Wu said it was significantly smaller than what is being proposed.

The government did not comment on the proposal.

Read more: https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/push-for-provincial-land-acquisition-fund-gathers-steam-1.2156674

Old Growth Walbran – Shaw TV Victoria

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Check out the news report by Shaw TV on the endangered Central Walbran Valley! TJ Watt and Ken Wu from the Ancient Forest Alliance talk about their goal of legislation to protect all of BC's endangered old-growth forests and to ensure a sustainable second-growth forest industry, and Dan Hager of the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce talks about the local business community's interest in seeing the Central Walbran protected for tourism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N29hAzW4zJQ

BC Hydro orders protestors off land near Site C dam

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FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. – Members of a small but defiant group are pledging to keep protesting the Site C hydroelectric project in northeastern British Columbia, despite being ordered off the land.

They set up a camp on Dec. 31, when BC Hydro and Power Authority issued an eviction notice while pressing ahead with land clearing for the controversial $9-billion dam.

The Crown corporation gave protesters 24 hours to leave the area known as Rocky Mountain Fort, on the south bank of the Peace River, just a few kilometres south of Fort St. John.

It warned that BC Hydro personnel will remove all contents of the camp and deliver it to RCMP but such action had not been taken by Monday afternoon.

Verena Hofmann, a Peace River Valley resident who was at the encampment over the weekend, said contractors appear ready to begin logging a three-kilometre region that is First Nations territory.

“We've just heard that equipment has started up. It looks like they are intending to keep on cutting,” she said on the phone from Fort St. John. “Treaty 8 First Nation people are holding their ground and are not moving from the site, so things are intensifying and changing quickly.”

Hofmann said demonstrators believe BC Hydro has no right to force them off the land in the midst of ongoing legal challenges involving Site C.

Several court cases raise major concerns about the potential impact of flooding from the creation of a new lake on the Peace River and the surrounding valley during construction of the dam.

She said upward of about five people at a time are occupying the west side of the mouth of the Moberly River in rotating shifts. First Nations people and other landowners are staying in a small cabin that was flown to the bank, as well as a hunting tent, she said.

It takes about 30 minutes to walk or less by snow machine to reach an area where contractors are set up, she said.

“There is no physical structure blockading BC Hydro's construction, it's individual people approaching them and reasonably and respectfully pleading with them to cease construction.”

Local people are trying to protect the land – significant because it contains swaths of old-growth boreal forest – until court proceedings run their full course, Hofmann said.

She said the group has asked that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reassess the environmental approval granted for the project by the former Conservative government, in conjunction with the B.C. government.

A spokesman for Site C project said the utility will continue to monitor the situation and is evaluating “all options.”

“BC Hydro respects the right of all individuals to peacefully protest and express their opinions about Site C in a safe and lawful manner,” Craig Fitzsimmons, the manager of communications and issues management, said in an email.

“We are hopeful this can be resolved. We are in discussions with the protesters and local authorities to allow us to resume construction activities.”

The Rocky Mountain Fort was established in 1794 by the North West Company as a fur trading post and is the site of the earliest settler post in mainland B.C.

The dam will be the third on the Peace River, creating an 83-kilometre-long reservoir that's slated to power up to 450,000 homes a year.

BC Hydro announced in mid-December that a consortium of three companies will be paid about $1.75 billion to build the largest components of the Site C development over the next eight years.

Read more: https://bc.ctvnews.ca/bc-hydro-orders-protesters-off-land-near-site-c-dam-1.2723597

B.C. forestry watchdog finds timber companies have too much power

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The B.C. government has given away so much power to timber companies that district forest managers no longer have the authority to stop suspect harvesting practices in the public good, a Forest Practices Board report reveals.

The independent provincial watchdog says that in recent years it has seen “situations arise where forestry development was putting local environmental and community values at risk, yet district managers could do little to affect the development and protect the public interest.”

The board adds that “conflicts between resource users could have been avoided if district managers had the authority to intervene to ensure operations would meet local management objectives and respect tenured interests.”

As the provincial officials “closest to the ground,” district managers should receive conditional discretion over the issuance of cutting permits and road permits in “specific and limited circumstances,” the board recommends.

“It would strengthen the district manager’s role in safeguarding the public interest when dealing with matters such as logging on steep slopes, cumulative effects management, visual quality, conservation of species at risk, or conflicts between tenure holders.”

The Forest and Range Practices Act is designed to give forest licensees flexibility to manage harvesting, within a framework of government objectives.

The report says “these objectives place restrictions on logging in certain locations, but licensees are free to operate elsewhere, as long as they comply” with the act and Forest Planning and Practices Regulation.

“It is licensees and their professionals who make the final decisions about how to balance resource values and minimize risks. If a problem occurs, government officials are restricted to dealing with it after the fact …”

Susan Yurkovich, president and CEO of the Council of Forest Industries, said in response that industry is “operating at a very high level of compliance” under the Forest and Range Practices Act and has a set of requirements and expectations against which companies are expected to perform.

She noted as an example that companies are required to maintain a minimum of 1,800 hectares of caribou habitat in the timber harvesting land base but are maintaining 10 times that amount and “expect to maintain that level for the foreseeable future.”

In another report last August, the board concluded that most forest stewardship plans governing forest activities on Crown land do not meet the public’s needs, are not enforceable by government and provide little in the way of innovative forest management.

Vivian Thomas, spokesperson for the Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations, said that in response to that report the ministry will be focusing on communicating clear government expectations, improved language for plan objectives, and improvements to measurement and verification of results and strategies. The board’s recommendation for greater power for district managers will be considered as a part of that process.

The board’s findings drew immediate support from the environmental community and those individuals who have fought against the province’s inability to stop controversial logging practices.

“Logging companies have free rein over everything,” said Dan Gerak, owner of Pitt River Lodge, who is fighting to stop the Teal Jones Group from logging his tourist viewscapes and the rainforest habitat of some of the last few grizzlies in southwest B.C.

“Somebody has to get control of these logging companies. They have way too much power.”

Teal Jones is also under fire for logging of old-growth forests in the Walbran Valley on Vancouver Island.

“District managers must be given back the right to say no,” said Joe Foy, national campaign director for the Wilderness Committee, noting government has stripped that right in the name of cutting red tape.

“People attend public meetings thinking that their pleadings to save endangered species habitat or a viewscape or favourite camping area will be heard and acted on by the district manager, but the people might as well be talking to a blank wall.”

Randy Saugstad, a rancher in the Chilcotin, was the subject of two Forest Practices Board reports into the impact of logging practices on the hydrology of his property and earlier this year reached an undisclosed out-of-court settlement with Tolko Industries.

“It should go back to where there’s government oversight,” he said at the time. “There’s no compliance and enforcement anymore. It’s just a free-for-all.”

Informed of the board report, he said: “This couldn’t come at a better time as BC Timber Sales has now — in spite of Tolko’s settling with me — gone up Twinflower Creek and laid out a 300-hectare block to be put up for auction. I have a lawyer involved again but am not looking forward to another six-year fight, especially with the government.” Saugstad’s 160-hectare ranch is bisected by Twinflower Creek.

Read more: https://www.vancouversun.com/forestry+watchdog+finds+timber+companies+have+much+power/11613128/story.html?__lsa=23a3-ac6e

Walbran Valley logging buffer-zone injunction extended

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Logging company Teal Cedar Products has been granted an extension of an injunction that will keep environmental activists at bay as the company continues to log in the Walbran Valley.

In a decision delivered Monday, the B.C. Supreme Court ordered that until the end of March, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee and other environmental activists must allow the company to carry on its work unimpeded and maintain a 50-metre safety zone from any motor vehicle engaged in active logging.

Teal Cedar Products is part of Surrey-based Teal-Jones Group.

The ruling came as a major blow to the Wilderness Committee, with organizer Torrance Coste saying the result could be permanent damage to the ecosystem.

“If people are discouraged from getting out to Walbran … if no one knows what’s going on, Teal-Jones will run rampant,” he said.

“That’s what we’ve seen in the rest of the [tree farm licence areas] where Teal-Jones is active. Public access to Walbran is critical to keep these last stands of old-growth standing.”

The court’s decision came after a long day of procedural hearings, punctured by muffled shouts from a sometimes vocal and passionate gallery of as many as 65 environmental advocates.

Madam Justice Jennifer Power acknowledged the gallery Monday, noting it drove home the point that Walbran is an area of significant public concern.

However, Power said she was satisfied that Teal-Jones had the right to log the area, and that protesters will now have to keep their distance.

Power also dismissed an application by activist Marlene Simmons for an adjournment of the proceedings.

Power said while she sympathized with Simmons, who represented herself, she was not persuaded to grant the adjournment.

However, Power did include in the order a clause that would allow Simmons or any other activist to have the order set aside with 24 hours’ notice in order to bring the matter back to the courts when they have counsel or additional evidence.

The Wilderness Committee and other activists want to see a ban on cutting of old-growth trees in the Walbran Valley.

Teal-Jones Group gained a permit in September from the province to harvest timber in cutblock No. 4424, a 3.2-hectare area of Crown land in the contentious Central Walbran, for pulp, paper and solid-wood products.

Coste said the cutblock contains 1,000 year-old trees and a densely packed group of old-growth western red cedars dubbed Castle Grove. “It’s a forest unlike any other on the planet,” he said.

According to Teal-Jones’ submissions, the extension of the injunction, which would have expired Monday at midnight, follows three blockades, the last of which saw a man lock himself to a log placed across the road to prevent anyone from going to work.

The injunction will allow legal protests and activities, but stops protesters from interfering with the company’s harvesting operations. Anyone found violating the injunction could be considered in contempt of court.

Activists began blocking Teal Cedar Products Ltd. from road-building work in November.

While the Wilderness Committee and Coste were named by the company in its court application, the activist group says it did not organize the blockades or civil disobedience, but is championing the rights of individuals to stand up for and advocate for the environment.

Teal-Jones’ counsel said it has the legal right to log the area and that the activists’ fight is with the province. And while the company respects the right of activists to protest, it says those blockades have become a safety issue.

Coste maintains the logging company is trying to block access to the Walbran for the law-abiding public. “In a democracy like B.C., we have a right to get out and witness what’s happening in our forests, to witness ecological destruction and to report back on that,” Coste said during a morning protest outside the court. “Teal-Jones is trying to bar that and we’re here to stand up and say the public is deeply concerned about what is happening in the Walbran.”

A lawyer for the Wilderness Committee argued that the 50-metre zone keeping protesters away from the logging equipment is too large and the injunction period is too long. Initially Teal-Jones had asked that it be extended until September.

Coste told a cheering crowd outside the court that the group is standing up for the rights of individuals to protest and defending the province’s forests.

“We are here in court standing up against Teal-Jones today, but a ban on old-growth logging, a legislated solution to this, [has] to come from the province of B.C.,” Coste said. “We need to put pressure on them.”

Teal-Jones may legally be permitted to log the area, but ethically and environmentally it’s wrong, Coste said.

“We don’t have the cathedrals, the castles that other parts of the world have. These are our links back in time and they should be protected as such, as historical monuments,” he told the crowd, arguing the province should ban the logging of old-growth forests this year. “There are no replacements for these forests. A 1,000-year-old forest takes 1,000 years to grow.”

Read more: https://www.vancouversun.com/business/resources/walbran+valley+logging+buffer+zone+injunction/11631656/story.html?__lsa=e20a-c7f0

In terms of emissions, logging the Walbran makes no sense

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Here’s a new article by the AFA’s Ken Wu in Focus Magazine about the impacts of old-growth logging on climate change. In particular, it debunks the false notion that logging old-growth forests and replacing them with younger second-growth tree plantations benefits the climate. Scientific research shows that BC’s coastal old-growth forests store two times more carbon per hectare than the ensuing second-growth tree plantations that they’re being replaced with – and that the second-growth plantations are simply trying to re-sequester or re-absorb the carbon that is lost into the atmosphere after logging the original old-growth forests. However, it’ll take 200 years to resequester the released old-growth carbon, which will never happen under the 30 to 80 year rotation ages in coastal BC when our second-growth stands are slated to be relogged. Thus, there is a major net release of carbon – about 50% – when converting old-growth forests into second-growth stands.

Wild Coast: Ground Zero for Walbran, East Creek, Nootka Island

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There are 3 articles on the endangered old-growth forests of Vancouver Island – the Central Walbran, Nootka Trail, and the East Creek Rainforest – as well as photos from the AFA's TJ Watt, in this latest issue of Wild Coast Magazine, an outdoor adventure and exploration magazine for the Pacific Coast. See pages 23 to 31:
https://issuu.com/wildcoast/docs/16sp_web?e=1982129%2F31486611

Port Renfrew businesses call on B.C. to halt logging of ancient trees

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PORT RENFREW, B.C. – Business leaders in Port Renfrew, B.C., a community that once thrived on forestry, are calling for a ban on logging in the nearby Walbran Valley.

The valley is full of ancient old-growth trees, and the Chamber of Commerce says tourists who come to see them have created a multibillion-dollar economy along Vancouver Island’s west coast.

Some of the old trees are protected within the boundary of the Carmanah-Walbran Provincial Park, but chamber president Dan Hager says logging is currently underway in the rest of the valley.

The chamber, which represents 73 local businesses, has released a statement calling on the B.C. government to immediately ban logging in the unprotected portion of the valley.

It says the most heavily visited areas of the Walbran are outside the park’s protected areas.

The group Ancient Forest Alliance has lobbied heavily for the Walbran’s protection and says a logging company is planning eight new cutblocks in the valley, including one that has been approved by the province.

Read more: https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/port-renfrew-businesses-call-on-b-c-to-halt-logging-of-ancient-trees-1.2699753

Jack Knox: Pop bottles could give green funding extra fizz

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Could unredeemed pop- bottle deposits save B.C.’s precious green bits? Yes, says the Ancient Forest Alliance. So could a property-speculation tax, or money from the extraction of non-renewable natural resources, or a dozen other potential revenue streams.

The Victoria-based conservation group wants the province to set up a $40-million-a-year fund to protect critical natural areas — crucial wildlife habitat, recreation corridors, sources of drinking water and so on — before they get covered in asphalt.

The twist, though, is that the Alliance isn’t asking the province to raise the money for the proposed Natural Lands Acquisition Program by simply dipping into general revenue.

Instead, the group had the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre look at ways other jurisdictions fund similar endeavours.

The law centre found 16 ways that other governments, mostly in the U.S., pay for conservation projects.

Among them were:

• “Pops For Parks”: The law centre report says $10 million to $15 million a year could be raised by scooping up unredeemed deposits on soft drinks and other containers that B.C. consumers fail to return.

Governments in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, and Michigan reason that unclaimed deposits rightly belong to the consumers who paid them, not the entities that keep them as an unearned windfall profit. Hence, those states claim the bulk of the money in the consumers’ name, arguing that doing so makes up for all the containers that end up in the landfills and as roadside litter.

• Resource Taxes: The law centre argues a small portion of B.C. resource revenue should be dedicated to the fund.

The rationale is that the depletion of non-renewable natural resources should be offset by the acquisition and protection of natural lands.

The U.S. federal government plows $900 million in resource taxes, mostly from the offshore oil and gas industry, into its parks system each year. Individual states have similar programs.

• Land-speculation tax: The idea would be to tax certain types of speculation, making up for the loss of land as B.C. adds 30,000 homes a year. The law centre cited a Vermont tax aimed at property flippers.

This one would be contentious, though: Remember that the province quickly slapped down Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson this year when he proposed such a tax to stop speculators from driving up housing prices in the Lower Mainland.

The Ancient Forest Alliance wants the province to adopt those three measures as well as some combination of 13 other tools used elsewhere to fund conservation. Among the possibilities are a dedicated tax on outdoor equipment such as hunting rifles and fishing rods, a tax on environmentally harmful products and a fee for vanity-style licence plates sold to conservationists.

“The mechanisms are creative,” Alliance executive director Ken Wu says.

The important thing, he says, is to come up with a dedicated, predictable source of funding, just as the Capital Regional District did when residents voted for a parkland-acquisition property tax in 1999.

Not that the Natural Lands Acquisition Program would be just for parks. It could also be used to secure Port Alberni’s water supply, say, or to put a protective covenant on wildlife habitat on private land.

B.C. had a pretty aggressive parks-expansion program in the 1990s, but it was based on the dedication of Crown land, not the acquisition of private property. That’s where the issue is particularly acute: the places where development sprawls into the same near-urban areas where fragile eco-systems exist. It’s great to have a park in the wilderness, but you also have to protect your local water supply, or the bog that sponges up the rain and keeps your basement from flooding.

Greater Victoria residents recognized that 16 years ago when they voted for the CRD’s parks acquisition fund, which now generates about $3 million a year. It has been used to preserve much of the region’s taken-for-granted greenery: the Sooke Potholes, bulldozer-bait property next to the Juan de Fuca trail, land linking Mount Work and Thetis Lake parks, and the massive swath of the Sooke Hills that Victorians view as the city's backdrop.

“Repeatedly, voters have voted to tax themselves to protect parks,” says Calvin Sandborn, the UVic law centre’s legal director. That convinces him that there would be widespread public support for a dedicated provincewide conservation fund.

That belief will be put to the test as Wu and his Ancient Rainforest Alliance attempt to get other conservation and recreation groups to sign on to the idea and, the real challenge, win over the government.

Read more: https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/jack-knox-pop-bottles-could-give-green-funding-extra-fizz-1.2131156